Musings and waffle from a British lit addict

Month in Numbers: January

As I seem to do every year, I’m changing up how I do my monthly reviews in 2018. Last year I did a monthly favourites post but this year I’m tracking more of my reading using Sophie from Portal in the Pages’ spreadsheet and I’m actually doing a couple of reading challenges this year, I wanted to look more at my reading/book buying stats. I’m sure the categories will change month on month depending on what looks interesting!

Books Read

I had a pretty good reading month in January! I read 7 books in total and a respectable 2,306pages. This might be in part owing to the fact that I read 3 graphic novels over the month but either way, I’m happy with those totals. As my nifty spreadsheet tells me, that’s an average of 74 pages read per day and an average of one book finished every 4 days. I read one 2 star read (As I Descended by Robin Talley) and one 5 star read (Saga: Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan). At an average rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, I’ll call the month a success.

The most interesting thing I’ve noticed is that of the 7 books I’ve read, 6 were written by women. I never consciously pay attention to much about authors when I’m picking what to read next and definitely focus more on the plot and what I’m in the mood for. It’s curious then that I seem to be going for so many more female authors. We’ll see how that pans out.

I’m also quite surprised that I haven’t actually read any fantasy during January. Each year in wrapping up the year, I’ve assumed that fantasy is my most read genre. Perhaps I’ve been wrong! In January, I read 3 graphic novels, 2 crime/thriller novels, 1 horror novel and 1 historical fiction:

7) See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt (4 stars)

6) Saga: Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (5 stars)

5) Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart (4 stars)

4) The Memory Chamber by Holly Cave (4 stars)

3) Thornhill by Pam Smy (3 stars)

2) Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary M. Talbot (4 stars)

1) As I Descended by Robin Talley (2 stars)

Books Acquired

Now here’s where things unravel. I apparently acquired 25 books during January. Oops? So that means that the number of books that I have in my house unread has gone up by 18 in the month of January! It’s weird seeing the amount of money that I spend on books gradually creeping up over the weeks. £82.66 in January, it would seem! I definitely wouldn’t go so far as to say that seeing the figures is changing my behaviour but maybe it will over the course of the year. I’ve used the library a fair bit and got a couple of books from NetGalley so I’m only at an average spend of £3.31 per book.

Book I acquired in January that I’m most looking forward to: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Challenge Update

Science Fiction v Fantasy Bingo: I’ve read two books for this during January:

Haunted – Thornhill by Pam Smy

This is totally going to happen one day – The Memory Chamber by Holly Cave

TBR Pile Challenge: None read so far…

Beat the Backlist: The average time that the books I’ve read have spent on my TBR is 6 months. Of the 7 books I read, only 2 have been books that I’ve acquired since the start of 2018. So solidly above my goal of 50% so far!